Weigh in Motion systems for railway vehicles: Performance and robustness analysis

Abstract

One of the most important issue in the railway research is represented by the accurate estimation of the axle loads of railway vehicles. Weigh in Motion (WIM) devices are designed to measure loads with the vehicle in motion, making the weighing process more efficient. This paper is focused on an innovative algorithm for high speed WIM applications able to estimate the wheel loads of trains by means of indirect track measurements. The novelty of the proposed estimation method are its generality, the possibility to be used with different layouts and its robustness against numerical and measure noise. The main estimation procedure is based on least square (LSQ) minimization techniques, used to process the set of experimental physical input. The whole WIM architecture has been developed in cooperation with Ansaldo STS and ECM SpA.